


Bitter Knowledge

by redfiona



Category: Impact Wrestling | Total Nonstop Action Wrestling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-29 06:48:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17803061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redfiona/pseuds/redfiona
Summary: Frankie should have resisted his curiosity.  Now he's got to live with what he knows.





	Bitter Knowledge

**Author's Note:**

> Set at the beginning of the Claire Lynch angle. Therefore severely jossed by the twists that took it into the ludicrous.

When Daniels first told him, Frankie didn't want to believe it. AJ had always been about being good and doing the right thing and it just didn't sound like something he'd do.

He had plenty of reasons not to believe Daniels. He's known both of them long enough to know that Christopher Daniels isn't always the most reasonable person on the subject of AJ Styles. It was the strangest thing - if you wanted someone to give you a run down on all of AJ's successes, and why he was one of the best in the business, Daniels would be the first person to give it to you, but about half, maybe three-quarters of the time, first you'd have sit through a half hour rant about all of AJ's flaws and how everything was tilted in his favour. Daniels was AJ's biggest cheerleader and his worst enemy all in one, and it was always that way.

Because they were almost an everyday thing, Frankie had learned to tune Daniels's anti-AJ rants out. He thought he'd picked that up from AJ. Despite the way they were always at each other's throats, because who wasn't, it was large division and there was only one belt, AJ had this sort of tolerance for Daniels when Daniels started doing his thing. Sure he hit him sometimes, and hadn’t there been some great matches from that, but sometimes, when things were good between them, AJ would let Daniels rant, and then carry on with whatever he’d been planning to do when the fit had left Daniels. So that was how Frankie decided to treat Daniels, let him talk. He'd get to whatever point he wanted to make after the inevitable AJ rant.

When Daniels began to lure him in, he didn't tell Frankie everything. He did what he usual did, whispered vaguely about things not being right, and the thing was AJ. So far, so much the same as always. Only this time, it was different. Daniels wanted Frankie to pay attention, he wasn't willing to be put off with absent "yeah, sure, yes" responses. So Frankie played along, even tagged with him for a while. That part wasn't a hardship, Daniels was good, just crazy on the topic of AJ Styles. It wasn't enough though, Daniels was unnaturally excited by something, saying things like "I've got him this time," under his breath. He wasn't going to let it drop until he'd told Frankie, and he wasn't going to tell Frankie until Frankie broke and said he wanted to know the details. Frankie tried to ignore him, he really did, but it's hard to ignore someone who looks quite so much like they want to say "I told you so" to the whole world.

Even so, Frankie should have ignored Daniels but curiosity is a terrible thing. Daniels also manipulated him, the way Daniels tended to. Daniels always knew exactly which buttons to press, this time he wanted to make Frankie want to know and he succeeded. Daniels strung him along and kept him interested. Mostly it was the way Daniels seemed more confident this time. Yes, he was still creeping round corners and not saying anything to anyone but Frankie, but there was something different. He said he had evidence.

That was what got to Frankie in the end; wanting to know what evidence Daniels thought he had. Frankie was worried that Daniels had finally flipped and all Daniels would show him was a room with walls covered in nonsense in black ink, written in Daniels's scrawl.

It really had been what Frankie expected to be shown. He hadn't expected there to be actual evidence, because the whole thing *sounded* like another one of Christopher's paranoid rants about AJ. AJ is sleeping with the boss and that's why he gets all the breaks. Actually, if it sounded like anyone, it sounded like Kash, but Frankie knew Daniels wouldn't like the comparison. That was why he'd been tempted to make it when Daniels first started all this. The accusation was so far beneath his usual standards. Like AJ would do that!

Frankie shouldn't have given in to his curiosity.

Frankie didn't think he was naive, he was past thirty and coming up on fifteen years of wrestling. He's too old for heroes, and none of this should have come as a shock. Wrestler was a human being with human weaknesses. But still, he'd thought that AJ was one of the good guys. AJ didn't drink, didn't smoke, didn't swear. And hadn't that been the most fun, winding AJ up and watching him try not to. 'Cause it wasn't that he didn't know how to, he chose not to. It was who AJ was. AJ wrestled, played computer games, said his prayers, and never looked at a woman who hadn't given him the ring on his finger.

And apparently he'd been lying about that all along, because AJ was sleeping with Dixie to get ahead.

Some part of Frankie didn't want to believe it. When you said it out loud, the whole thing sounded so stupid. But he had to believe, he'd seen the pictures. What other reason could there be for Dixie pulling AJ into a room in a no-tell motel? There's no innocent explanation for pulling him in by his shirt. If there had been an honest reason for that meeting, it wouldn’t have been in a thirty dollar a night motel, it would have been in Dixie’s usual luxury penthouse at the Hilton.

Daniels crowed about it when he showed the photo to Frankie, and Frankie nearly punched him. Daniels didn't need to be so happy about it. Or maybe Frankie was over-reacting because he didn't want to believe it. Maybe he'd put too much faith in AJ, because AJ had been proof that you didn't have to be asshole to make it, that you could just be good at wrestling. And then it turned out not to be true, everyone was working an angle.

Frankie's not ridiculous enough, or Daniels enough, to say he's heartbroken, but that might close to the truth. If anyone asks, he'll go with disappointed. He believed in AJ Styles, and everything he stood for, and now Frankie knows that that was all bullshit, and it's not like bullshit is in short supply in the wrestling industry.  



End file.
